Oftentimes, her dreams were nightmares, terrifying visions and violent reenactments that force her to relive the darkest of what she can remember. She only rarely has anything else, something less forbidding. But when it isn't a nightmare, she dreams of sadness instead and a woman in a long pale dress.
Nobara doesn't know why. The woman looks like she could have belonged in Koori. But unlike its people, her eyes are always lonely. She is always standing there in the snow, amidst the midnight trees that one might think she is foolish... foolish to be alone at such a dark hour.
And she would always hum a lonely tune, a quiet lullaby, a familiar melody Nobara cannot be placed. The woman always hums it softly, as if she were whispering to the wind like they will carry a message that they can only deliver.
And her sadness—it would be most obvious when she would rest her tender hands on her stomach. As she closes her eyes then, her eyes that would remind anyone of the moon, indeed one might think she is foolish...
Who are you waiting for?
In that dream, there is always a masked spectator who watches her for the longest of hours. But in the end, just like all the dreams that replay the same thing over and over again, he still walks away to disappear into the trees and shadows.
He leaves her too, like he doesn't know her in the first place.
For the longest of times, that's always how it plays out. And even as the dream would fade and Nobara would wake back to reality, the longing of waiting for something inside her never really goes away fully.
It has already latched itself inside of her, that simmering feeling beneath her skin that sometimes, when she feels too much, she would grow feverish with loneliness that it would turn into anger she cannot simply control.
That is why she fears it, how it can so easily consume her—and she fears it even more when it lies dormant like this, when it would sometimes whisper quietly inside her head.
Snickering.
Echoing inside her until she goes mad.
So the unknown makes her feel uneasy—the unfamiliar voices, the white room and the bright light coming from the overhanging fluorescent lamp.
And more so the strangers.
"She's awake."
At the bedside, there is a man who wears a turban-like hitai-ate and a girl who looks at her curiously at the opposite side. She looks no older than Deidara. Her hair, though, reminds Nobara of sand like she's born and raised there.
Their staring... makes her feel uneasy.
They all make her feel uneasy.
"Call the doctor, Temari," the man says and the girl wordlessly disappears behind the door before shortly coming back with a brown-haired man in white garb.
As the new stranger approaches, the child flinches away from him but is too weak to deny his hands.
"She's a little disoriented right now but she's out of danger," he says after checking up on her. His brown eyes look worried and it baffles her. "Baki-san, can I have a word outside?"
The two men walk out of the room and Nobara stares at their backs before they disappear completely behind the door.
As they're left alone together, the sand-haired girl smiles at her almost reluctantly, a smile that looks a bit distorted when there is this dull ache that keeps throbbing inside the child's head.
When the girl draws closer, Nobara retreats away from her the same way she did with the doctor. The look of discomfort in her eyes makes the girl pause before her hand drops to her side.
"I'm Temari," she says after a long while, looking at the child as if she's waiting for something. "The old guy is Baki-sensei. What's your name?"
Her tone is gentle, like she's cautious of what she might break. Temari can easily tell how withdrawn the little foreigner seems to be for many obvious reasons, but the rest of her... the girl cannot quite easily read.
Now that her hair has been brushed away from her face, as it should be, the child is quite the delicate sort to look at. Even with her strange eyebrows dotted on her forehead like a pair of decorations, it's difficult not to stare at her.
Temari has never seen anything so pretty in someone so damaged before.
She is patient with her as the child tries to speak, but she only surprises both of them when dry coughs suddenly sputter from her throat in painful rasps.
Certainly, Suna has not been kind to the foreign girl.
"I'll get you water—" Temari stands up. While she normally would have been guarded around strangers, she can't find it in herself to put up walls. And even though she doesn't want to, a certain fragility about the child makes her soft-hearted.
She goes immediately, leaving for the nearest water dispenser by the nurse's station a few halls away.
When Temari first came to look for her sensei, she didn't really believe the man would be injured enough to be admitted in the hospital, but she hadn't expected a little stranger either.
At first, she thought Baki might have had a secret kid. But looking at the child herself, Temari knows that can't possibly the case. She can already tell her sensei is troubled by the situation when she sees him by the corridor on her way back to the room.
"Baki-sensei?"
When he turns to look at her, the man is barely able to mask the grim expression on his face and he feels as if he'll have yet another headache. He's already talked to the Kazekage earlier after admitting the child in the hospital. Now, he's at a loss at his own predicament.
She seems to be a handful from the doctor's advice.
"She needs constant supervision. Considering her fragile condition, I'll need you to..."
Baki sighs. He hasn't had the slightest clue on how to deal with tiny... children, but since they can't just simply leave a child with unknown origins in an orphanage or foster care, he's burdened with the responsibility of keeping an eye on her as he's the one who brought her here in the first place.
"What are you doing here, Temari?" he asks, rubbing his temples with a hand in an attempt to ease his worries.
"I was getting water," Temari answers, raising the glass in her hand, but the way her sensei looks at her makes her think that that isn't what he actually means. "Well, father... he sent me. I was hoping you'd tell me, Baki-sensei."
At the girl's answer, some of his worries alleviated that he feels his stiff shoulders actually ease as he understood. Considering the man's busy schedule, it isn't quite a surprise the Kazekage would also send someone else when he can't spare the amount of time the child actually needs.
"We should head back for now," Baki says as he pats Temari on the back. "I'll explain it to you later."
To their surprise, however, they return to an empty room with the door left open. Baki immediately grows alert and Temari follows him back to the corridor when he darts out to look for the missing child. But it only takes a glance out the window to find her, when her unusually pale skin easily sets her apart from the others.
When they come down, she is still sitting by the shade with her hands on her knees, watching the small area designated for hospitalized children beside the building.
What is she doing...?
Temari looks at Baki for a moment before she steps forward, mindful of her steps before she crouches beside the child who hardly even acknowledges her presence. So instead, she turns to follow the child's gaze to the playground where mothers are laughing and playing with their children.
Longing.
That feeling of longing again.
Nobara sits almost too still as she envisions herself amongst them, in the same setting, laughing and giggling together with a mother and a father she can call her own. But even then, even in figments, their faces are smeared with dark ugly clouds as if even the imagination of happiness is something she isn't allowed to have.
Even Kakuzu...
The thought of Kakuzu feels farther and farther away that, despite the blazing heat, makes her feel strangely cold.
The child doesn't notice it herself. But just looking at her, when those marble black eyes begin to brim with quiet tears even as her face remains muted with emptiness, Temari feels the odd sense of grief that settles in her chest.
What could have made the child look so sad?
It's already sundown when Baki finally takes her home with him, when the child allows him to carry her in his arms. Or perhaps, she's just far too tired to care for what will become of her then with nothing to her name. But as he carries her like she can easily break, her lightweight form makes him ponder on a lot of things.
As a shinobi, Baki has seen many hapless children who have known abuse and neglect, orphans of war, children who have been exposed to the cruelties of the shinobi world. She isn't the first of her kind and it's the sad reality they have to live by.
He can only pity her for what she had to endure.
And yet still, the child considers herself to be fortunate. To Nobara, Kakuzu has never been neglectful. He provided for her on many occasions. He has never been selfish nor frugal about money for things he saw as basic necessities.
She is the problem. Her body has grown so accustomed to starvation that she's never been able to stomach more that she is used to. So perhaps that's why she feels empty all of the time. Perhaps Kakuzu has grown tired too, enough to realize that she is a burden after all, a mistake to take her out of the dungeons just like Yori once thought before.
Because you are never enough...
You are empty and hollow.
She trembles as her hands wound around herself. She wants to refuse heeding to its words, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows it speaks the truth no matter how painful its words are.
Baki's humble home, once swarming with Suna's warmth, now fills with a sudden chill as she feels it manifest behind her like a large looming shadow.
If you kill him...
"Are you alright? You're white as a sheet," Baki says as he kneels to the couch where he sat her. He can't see what else is with them, only the beads of sweat building up on her forehead and her weary eyes. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you back so soon."
Won't you feel alive then?